I was chatting to a friend of mine last night when she suddenly said, “What the **** did John Kerry say?!”

After she had (I assume) read more about it, she complained about it being a very good example about why it’s a stupid idea for politicians to go “off script.”

Until that discussion, I had planned not to say anything about it, primarily because other people, like Dafydd ab Hugh, had already covered the topic more thoroughly than I would have.

Just for the record, here’s the pertinent part of Kerry’s quote:

You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.

In his follow-up post, Dafydd links to John Kerry’s website’s multimedia section, where you can view the offending speech (“John Kerry Speaks a Rally in Pasadena“).

The way I see it, there are a few different ways that Kerry could have made this gaffe:

1. Kerry misread, misskimmed, misremembered, or otherwise messed up his prepared speech. He was supposed to be telling a “non political” joke about the President (which seems akin to telling a “nonreligious” joke about the Pope’s religious declarations, but whatever), and flubbed it, leading to an unintentional insult against the troops. [This seemed to be the take of the friend I was talking with, and she didn't seem interested in discussing which of the two sub-possibilities was most likely] This one has two sub-possibilities:
• Kerry didn’t mean to say what he said, and he certainly didn’t believe it [This is the position Kerry wants us to believe], or
• Kerry didn’t mean to say what he said, but he absolutely meant what he said. [This "Freudian slip" theory is my personal take on the situation, but I could be sold on #2]
2. He said exactly what he meant to say, (more or less) as it was scripted, and now he’s backpedaling because of the backlash. [This seems to be Dafydd's final conclusion in his second post]

In the end, I think that this incident, especially if one considers the non-apologies that’ve come from Kerry (and sources close to him) since, proves one thing. No matter how bad Bush’s administration might be, it’s important to remember that the alternative was likely to be worse.